Just a few minutes ago, I went into my basement searching for a specific book which I had not heretofore been keeping upstairs. I had no idea where it was. While searching for it, I opened a bunch of boxes that I probably hadn’t properly explored in years…stuff I just keep lugging with me from move to move. In one, I came across an old cigar box that I had entirely forgotten about. This is it:
This box is the earliest version of boxes I have today, in which I keep just about everything…tickets, programs, invitations, etc. Well there were things in this cigar box that just blew me away! Things I have ZERO memory of keeping, and I have no idea what made me think of keeping them at the time, but now they are incredible to see…old paychecks, school class schedules, appointment cards, etc. (And, paul, I found the ticket stubs to the two Seven Mary Three shows we saw together!) Anyway, most of it will be only interesting to me, but I might post some of it here from time to time, as it suits me. But this one thing seemed worth posting now. Here is the little card that was on the phone in my bedroom in high school that showed what I had set as speed dials…I couldn’t help but post this and then tag the people who appear on it (those who I am in contact with on Facebook)…what an interesting snapshot of an era for me. And how interesting that I had the movies on speed dial even then (it’s hard to read, but #8 says “Movies”) And my grandma? (number “zero” says “Gram A.”)
During my college years, there were a few movies that we just watched over and over and over. Some we watched hundreds of times. When I say “we” I refer to a changing cast of characters, different roommates and friends and acquaintances who maybe only crossed paths with me for a few months, or maybe, like Paul, were there for most of the college years. With Paul, we had two or three movies we watched endlessly: “Friday” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, and to a lesser extent, “The Borrowers”. With other groups or roommates, the movies were different. I spent countless hours getting wasted while watching “A River Runs Through It” with one set of roommates (things don’t always make sense in college), and a different roommate and I watched the Star Wars trilogy on a virtual repeat for an entire semester. Another film I watched at least 50 times sometime in my sophomore years was “Scent of a Woman”, which was probably my first exposure to Philip Seymour Hoffman, although I didn’t know it at the time.
It’s not a huge role for him. He plays the asshole friend. I didn’t even know he was in it until a few years after I became a big fan of his, and I went back to watch it again and there he was. It was a very formative time for me, as far as my movie tastes went. Who watches “A River Runs Through It” and “Scent of a Woman” while getting wasted? We did. I think we were getting used to the fact that we might like serious stuff, that we might be into grown-up movies. But we were college boys. We liked to party. The endings of these movies were like rumors to me, barely-remembered dreams. I was always blackout drunk by the ends, so it wasn’t until I finally stopped drinking that I can rightly say I enjoyed them all the way through.
There isn’t a great clip of Phil in this movie that I can embed on my blog, but you can see probably his best moment in the movie by clicking here.
I worry about life passing me by. I worry about not noticing the little things, or not knowing enough about the people I care about, or not seizing opportunity, or enjoying a beautiful spring day, or telling a pretty woman how pretty she is. (not that I am always great at these things, but I think about them, see?) I haven’t always worried about these things, but I think regular readers of my blog might understand where this impulse and concern of mine comes from. I know that I am far from the only person who thinks this way, but this tendency, I think, might be a bit heightened in me.
Like, I think, most people, my younger years were spent in a kind of frivolity. I’ve always been an introspective type, prone to pondering the meaning of life (if you’ll allow me to be so cliché), but my late teens and early twenties were spent pondering the meaning of my life, often on an extremely localized scale. I didn’t care about much else. And while I have grown up into anything but a “selfless” man, I’d like to think, at least, that the roses I stop to smell are now in public gardens, and not my own backyard.
The first time I ever heard the band Hey Rosetta! (the exclamation point is theirs, not mine) I was listening to the XM Radio station The Verge, and their song “I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time” came on. At first I was caught by the repetitive, rocky riff, and then I saw the song title on my car’s display, and I was hooked by the title alone.
“I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time” talks about a man who spent his whole life not paying attention to the world around him, and by the time he “wakes up”, it’s just too damn late for anything. Lyricist Tim Baker gives us some very straight-forward material here, as well as some more complicated stuff if you are the pondering type. He starts us off pretty plainly: “I’ve been asleep for a long, long time. Blonde hair to brown, and brown to white. My mom is buried beside my dad, but I was asleep for all of that.”
And it’s that line that gets me, still, more than anything: My mom is buried beside my dad, but I was asleep for all of that.
More than anything, this song has made me want to know my parents. Really know them, like human beings, with histories and quirks and human qualities and not just dismiss them as “my parents”. Because I’ve been made aware that life is not forever, and someday I won’t have these parents around, and I do not want to be asleep for all of that.
Another line that frazzles me: “The schools that we went to have all been closed, and all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.” Gives me chills. The passage of time and all that jazz.
Later, in a fantastic musical breakdown before a stunning crescendo, Tim hits us with some more ponderous material: he makes an analogy comparing “sleeping” people to reeds caught in a rising river tide: “The river’s up, the reeds are caught halfway across what never was. The river rose, and swept in slow. When the reeds awoke, they were half below.”
Don’t wait until you’re half below to wake up.
I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
by Hey Rosetta!
I’ve been asleep for a long, long time.
Blond hair to brown and brown to white.
My mom is buried beside my dad,
but I was asleep for all of that.
I shut my eyes for a moment’s rest,
cause I get so tired.
What thing transpired while my body slept
to beset my mind?
The schools that we went to have all been closed,
and all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.
The songs that we sung have all gone quiet.
What happens below as we sleep at night?
The river’s up, the reeds are caught
halfway across what never was.
The water rose and swept in slow.
When the reeds awoke they were half below.
I was lucky enough, shortly after falling head-over-heels for this band, to bring my friend Paul along for the ride, and he is now as big (if not maybe even slightly bigger) fan of the band than I am. In late 2011, Paul and I (and our friend Chris, as well) trekked to Ithaca, New York, to see our first Hey Rosetta! show (the first of 7 for me, now). It was in a little shit-shack of a bar. As we approached to enter, hours before the show, the first thing I heard was the band soundchecking a slow, acoustic version of “I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time”. It was a moment of amazement for me. As the three of us entered the bar, we were practically alone inside, and on a tiny stage, there was the band, playing this song that had transformed my life to an empty room. There are very few moments in life like this one. Later, when they played it during the show, I taped it, but the video quality is HORRIBLE and my battery ran out halfway through, but here it is anyway:
Me with Tim Baker, lyricist and singer of Hey Rosetta!, at the Ithaca, New York show
If you’ve got this far in the entry and are actually interested in/ like this song, please watch this, a video of them playing the song live for real for real. I swear, it can change your life:
On Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013, I will have been sober for ten years. And what is strange about that, it has only recently started to seem like ten years. For the longest time, I have divided my life into two distinct periods: the part of my life before I got sober, and the part afterward. For most of these past ten years, anything that happened “post-sobriety” seemed recent, even if it wasn’t, exactly. I got sober in
The only picture I am in possesion of of me drinking. Very near the beginning, before real addiction.
2003 (for those mathematically challenged), and I would often read about something that happened in, say, 2005, and even if it had been seven years ago, I would say to myself, Well, I was sober, so it can’t have been that long ago! It has only been recently, as I was looking forward to my tenth anniversary, that the events surrounding my addiction and recovery have begun to seem like they have some age on them.
I’ve done a lot of writing over the years about my addiction and recovery, but most of it focused on the drinking part, and the craziness of that part of my life, or my early “pink cloud” of recovery. I’ve never recorded the events surrounding the actual date of the beginning of my new life—April 3rd, 2003—and even though such a recording may seem a tad self-important, the years are fading my memory, and if I don’t do it now, I fear I never will.
At my cousin Josh’s wedding, about a year before sobriety. I don’t look too bad, but note the alky’s nose and rosy cheeks.
I only drank alcoholically for five years, from about the age of 20 until 25. In the grand scheme of life, this seems a pittance, but what I lacked in longevity I made up for in severity. I was as physically addicted to alcohol as a person could be by the time I stopped (which is to say, considerably), and had graduated to having pretty severe withdrawals anytime I went an hour or more without alcohol in my system. Not to brag on my addiction, but the rehab folks were quite astonished to see a 25 year old as far along the continuum as I was. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.
By late summer of 2002, at the age of 24, it had become apparent to even my most casual friends that something had to change. I couldn’t do anything sober. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t shower, couldn’t work, couldn’t have sex sober, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t be awake sober. I had large plastic cups with liquor in them in the console of my car—my “driving drinks”. I made sure I fell asleep with liquor beside me so I could start drinking literally the moment I woke up. I drank at every moment of every day. I had car accidents—some that people knew about, but plenty that nobody knew about. I am one of the luckiest people alive. Even now, I know that.
People started saying things here and there, dropping hints that they were uncomfortable, that my version of partying wasn’t really partying. I knew something was going to come to a head soon, but I was in denial as long as possible. Listen, when you get right down to it, it is just plain weird and terrifying not being able to stop drinking. It happens slowly and silently and by the time you realize what’s going on, you have no idea how to get out. You didn’t plan for this, but it’s so confusing, you just ignore it as long as you can. Turns out, my addiction was so quick and severe, I actually couldn’t ignore it for as long as I would have liked. My
body was doing too many weird things (constantly having alcohol in your system for a few years will affect just about every system you’ve got), so that when, one late summer afternoon when my friend Shelley (the girlfriend, at that time, of my good buddy Paul) suggested, as we sat in their sweltering second-story apartment, that I should just call a rehab and see what they say, I said, OK, I will. She said, why not now? And she got a phone book, and we looked up rehabs, and I called one called Roxbury just outside Shippensburg, and they gave me a date a few weeks from then when a bed would be available, and I gave them my information, and they reserved my bed. Just like that. It was quite surprising. I hadn’t begun that day thinking, in the least, about going to rehab. I remember immediately calling one or both of my parents with the news as though I had just gotten engaged or had a baby. Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to go to rehab! I don’t remember their reactions, but I’m sure they were happy but reserved. I imagine the only thing more terrifying than being an addict is having a child going through an addiction. How scary!
There is something very surreal about arriving to rehab. Nobody grows up thinking they’re going to go to rehab, and you’re never really prepared for what it’s going to look like, smell like, feel like. All of a sudden, you’re there, and in that instant, no matter what came before, you are the type of person who winds up in rehab.
A typical room at Roxbury. (pic taken off the internet, not taken by me, but it is definitely Roxbury)
A lot of the details around my first arrival to Roxbury rehab are kind of fuzzy. I know that my dad drove me there. I remember I got really, really drunk before I got there. I remember arriving at this squat, modern building, almost like a Frank Gehry building with glass bubbles and counter-inuitive overhangs. I remember it being night, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I remember going into the lobby with my dad, carrying a big suitcase, and it felt, still, like a hospital, or a hotel, or something other than what it was. Something less desperate, something more normal. I think now of what it must have been like for him, to arrive with his son and to leave without him. And why? Did he feel like he had failed? Like he had failed me? Was he ashamed? Even now these are thoughts I can barely confront. Now matter how you exorcise it, the guilt of these things won’t leave you, ever. And rightfully so.
I remember saying goodbye to my father then, after having filled out some paperwork, and being led into the guts of the building, up and around narrow steps, into various nurses offices, answering lots of questions, filling out more forms. There was a loneliness to these moments beyond any experience I’ve had before or since. Not in the depths or degree of loneliness, but in that it was a very strange loneliness. It is a very specific variety. You are surrounded by people, yet everyone you know and love, is back out there living a “normal” life. And yet here you are, among strangers and paid professionals, unable to live on your own. Unable to.
So, I won’t tell you the whole tale of my rehab. It is a very long and interesting story (unless you’ve been to rehab, in which case it’s probably pretty boring). Maybe I’ll tell you that story for year eleven.
But I was in there for, I think, 32 days. When I came out, I stayed sober for somewhere around 2 weeks. I have a very blank memory of the time between my first and second rehabs. It is easy for me to figure out that I was out of rehab about 3 months before entering it for the second, and final, time.
When I started drinking again after my first rehab, it was amazing how quickly the addiction took hold again. It wasn’t just like I had never stopped, it was actually worse. One sip, one little drink, and I was in its clutches like never before. For those of you who’ve never been addicts, try to remember, this isn’t in the least bit fun. However it happens, it is a fact that I was drinking because I had no choice. Or at the very least, the part of me that was capable of making a choice was hidden from me. It is absolutely crippling. It is an insidious, ridiculous affliction. I couldn’t hide it for long; I knew all my friends and family could see I was drinking again.
In these three months between rehabs, I lived the absolute most horrid version of my life. Everything hurt, my skin always crawled, I was mean and miserable and sad all the time, any vestige of a moral compass I had left was gone completely and there was no act I wouldn’t commit, no person I wouldn’t do anything to or with, nothing I wouldn’t steal, no drug I wouldn’t take to try and ease the ache, no building I wouldn’t go into, no surface I wouldn’t sleep on, no family member or friend I wouldn’t injure, irrevocably, smearing guilt onto my psyche for eternity.
As far as I know, the last picture taken of me before sobriety (with a friend who shall remain unnamed). I don’t look too bad, but it was a horrid time.
I ended up, finally, not going to work, and living for about a week in a squalid motel with a few friends, which I have recounted here. (Really, read this.) After ten years of reflection, the time at the hotel was clearly my “bottom”, the lowest of the low. Even now, just thinking about it brings me very close to vomiting.
But from the ashes, we did rise. From the hotel room, I finally managed to call Roxbury again and got accepted into their program a second time.
The second time at rehab, I did not have a good time. I was as much of a physical and emotional wreck as I can imagine ever being. I was only there nine days this time (because of quirks in Pennsylvania’s public funding for rehab, as I did not have health insurance at the time), and by the time I left, my body was still feeling the after-effects of intense physical withdrawal, and I was still a complete basketcase. My emotional development, having been halted at the age of 20 by being constantly drunk, was now in complete disarray; my life had become unmoored, all directional signals erased, which only added to my mind’s already baffled sense of self.
As it became clear that I would not be able to stay long in rehab this time, I became terrified, because I didn’t know where to go or what to do once I got out, and I had no faith that I would stay sober for even a day. I requested Roxbury to help me locate a “recovery house”, which is basically a halfway house specifically designed for people in addiction recovery. Placing patients in Recovery Houses is a service Roxbury provides. Unfortunately, because my time was so short, it was difficult for them to find me a space in one of the better, more reputable recovery houses in central Pennsylvania. Just two days before I was to be kicked out on my kiester, I was called into an office (who can remember the offices of places?) and told they had found me a place: there was a bed available at a place called the Bethesda Mission, in Harrisburg.
I’d never heard of the Bethesda Mission before, but Bob (my counselor at Roxbury, I do remember his name) informed me that, yes, it was primarily a homeless shelter, there was a second half to the place that was a recovery house, headed up by one of the most respected recovery experts in the state. He assuaged my fears that even though it had “mission” in the title, I would in fact be going to a very respected recovery house.
My day to leave rolled around and I had decided not to involve any of my family or friends with this phase. I took Roxbury up on a service they offer, whereby they have a big Roxbury van that will drive you from the rehab to wherever you are going to end up. I said my goodbyes (much less emotional this time than the first time, as I had been too fucked up this time to make any friends) and walked outside into the beautiful spring air of April 2nd, 2003, and got into a big white van that was to take me from Roxbury (right outside of Shippensburg, where I and my whole family had gone to college) to Harrisburg, to a recovery house.
And my high school Driver’s Ed teacher was driving the van.
He recognized me, and I recognized him, even though we hadn’t had any kind of close relationship in high school. (Mr. Troutman, I think?) But we struck up an immediate and cordial conversation. He’d retired from teaching a few years before, and had happened onto this job as a little part-time gig for extra cash. He didn’t seem for a moment to judge me, although I’m sure I must have blubbered quite a bit in trying to explain myself.
I talked him into stopping in Carlisle (which is about halfway between Shippensburg and Harrisburg) at the restaurant I worked at, where I had a paycheck waiting for me. I had an inkling that paycheck was going to come in handy, as without it, I had literally zero money. Not even a penny.
Finally, he pulled up in front of this large stone structure in downtown Harrisburg, and helped me take my two suitcases out of the van. And then, before I even walked into the building, he drove away.
The Bethesda Mission
There I stood, on the wide Harrisburg sidewalk, and looked around. I was a man with free will. I could walk any direction I wanted, talk to whoever I wanted, do whatever I wanted. It was exhilarating and terrifying. Exhilarating because, between rehab and the prison of addiciton, I hadn’t felt free like this in…well, forever. At this point in my life, being alone in a city even the size of Harrisburg was a new thing for me. But terrifying because I had no faith in myself to not squander this freedom on drinking.
I turned toward the building, smothered my fear, hiked up my luggage, and walked up the stairs toward the Bethesda Mission.
The plump, bespectacled man behind the desk in the lobby had never heard of me. They did not have a spot reserved for me in the Recovery House, and in fact, a bed wouldn’t probably be open there for months. What could they do for me? Well, I could always sleep on a mattress in the chapel.
What does that mean? I asked him. He says he’ll show me. He led me down a short hallway and into a large, open space that had obviously once been used for worship. It had a high, vaulted cieling, stained glass windows, and an unmistakable altar at the other end. But now, dozens of filthy-looking, paper-thin mattresses lined each wall, and tinkling, calming recovery music was piped in from unseen speakers. About a dozen haggard and hungry looking men shuffled about the open space, looking at me, sizing me up.
At night, we put the mattresses on the floor. You’re welcome to one, once you pass the piss test.
Suddenly, I wondered just how much free will I really had.
1. Philadelphia is the fifth most populous city in the United States. It’s kind of a big deal.
2. The city of Philadelphia is its own county—the only instance of a city-county in Pennsylvania.
3. The Greek translation of “Philadelphia” is literally “brotherly love”.
4. It is one of the twelve “four sport cities”.
5. As of December 31st, 2009, there were 829,873 registered Democrats living in the city, and 134,216 Republicans.
How I’m Doing!
I am really having a grand old time. Living around people I know again, as well as working at a job whose main training tool is basically telling you to be really really nice to people, has started to make me come back around to caring about my fellow human again. I love my new job. I have really, really fallen in love with my mother’s cats, and I dare say they’ve started falling for me, too. Living with my mother is not only easy and tolerable, but downright great (and I don’t care how that sounds coming from a 34 year old; you can stuff your societal norms where the sun, it does not care to shine. I am talking about your bunghole). I have way too many fun and interesting things to do, all the time. This new setup is redefining what I am interested in, and how I spend my time and money; where I’ll end up on that spectrum remains to be seen. I will say that without a doubt, there will not be a year-end “Top Ten Movies” list of 2012. I just cannot seem to muster the interest for movies right now (although there most definitely will still be a music list). I finally got back to Central PA to visit friends and Dad. It was a transcendant time. Dad and I’s developing interests in local history are making for lovely, lively, emotional visits. I only got to see a few friends on that visit but plenty more will be coming soon. Paul is coming here to see the Phillies vs. Marlins with me next Wednesday, so that should rule. I’m drinking a lot, a lot, a lot of coffee, and not just at work. I got a new, finally very nice record player. I’m kind of obsessed with it. I’ve decided I like owls now and my sister keeps finding rad owl statues/ figures for me. I cautioned her not to overdo it but with finds like these, I’m not sure overdoing it is possible.
Slightly prior to my life-changing introduction to Pearl Jam, I was introduced to 7m3 my freshman year in college. And their signature song, “Cumbersome”, while far from their best, is undeniably powerful, and no conversation about the band can ignore the song’s influence. Below you’ll find a link to the original, official video, and then an embedded live version that is an example of how they play the song nowadays.
My homeslice Paul and I just had a public tiff on my blog. Which sucks, because there aren’t many people in this life more important to me than Paul is, so I thought maybe I’d write a blog about our friendship. Although it should be noted that we do have a nice history of being little bitches to each other and arguing about stupid shit, but that was mostly over a decade ago, while we were cooking together at the same restaurant, probably sleep-deprived and hung-over, but still. We fight.
I’m sure I knew who Paul was before he knew who I was. Why? Because he played football for my high school. He was a year ahead of me, and we weren’t within light years of each other’s social groups. I wasn’t extremely aware of him, but I was aware of him. Years later, I’d frequently have dreams that I’d been transported back to high school (with all of my intervening memories and experiences intact) and I’d seek out Paul, who, when I found him, had also been transported with his memory intact. And so there we were, in high school, finally knowing each other. They were weird dreams.
In the months following high school, I became a regular at the restaurant Paul worked at. I frequented it late at night with my friend Jeremy and his girlfriend Cory (who I would later coup d-etat away from him); Jeremy had known Paul in high school, so Paul would come visit our table. I remember being suspicious, because Jeremy had been the star of the soccer team, and here was this Paul guy, also an athlete. And Cory, although she didn’t attend our high school, was the captain of her cheerleading squad. I suspected I might soon find myself on the outside. I know you’ve all seen pictures of me in wrestling or baseball uniforms, but I assure you, I was no athlete.
Fate is a fickle broad. Before I knew what was happening, suddenly, I worked at that restaurant, too, and before long, I was a cook there, too, and before long, I was working overnights in the kitchen with Paul, too. And (long story short here) we ended up going to the same college and being roommates and having the same group of college friends. Paul and I had quite rapidly become insperable, the kind of friends that when you show up somewhere alone, people always ask you where the other one is; although how that sort of thing happens is beyond me. All these years later, it just seems natural that Paul and I are hetero-lifemates, but back then, it didn’t seem so simple. Paul and I are quite different men (as good friends often are). We share some simliar interests, but actually have more differences than similarities. And not just the surface items like, he’s into sports and I’m not, or I’m into poetry and he’s not, as these differences are what can make a friendship keep ticking over the years (the male friends I do have whose interests most align with mine, I mostly don’t care for all that much, and I just keep them around because I might need them some day…for what, I have no idea). But Paul and I’s differences seemed a bit deeper than that to me. Mostly, he was a good soul and I was a bad one.
Now, he’ll probably want to argue with that, and he certainly could make a case for it. After all, we were damn young, and drunk and tired pretty much ceaselessly, and in college, and—dare I say it—completely captivating to the opposite gender. Neither of us were perfect young men. But in Paul, one could see the seed of a quality adult, and a man who could discern right from wrong (even if he still sometimes chose to ignore that distinction), and how to be honest, and forthright, and helpful.
I, on the other hand, was a total shit. It was probably obvious fairly early on that, while a whole bunch of us were partying constantly, I was the only one who couldn’t have stopped if I tried. And no matter what you believe about how much I am to blame for that addiction, the fact is that being a drunk is not often accompanied by positive personality traits. All those positive traits I listed above for Paul, think of their opposites, and apply them to the me of back then.
But somehow, we fit together. We picked up some company on the way (“Nature Boy” Chris Davey, Burke “Testudo” Bowen, Heidi “Heidi” Dagen, “Mello” Cory Kelso, “Sultry” Joel Holtry, and quite a few others) and within a year of meeting Paul, I suddenly had a brand new group of friends and a new lifestyle, the old high school chums all-but forgotten. And this was just in time, of course, for my descent into serious alcoholic oblivion.
There are lots of people to thank for how they handled my alcoholism and for what they did to help me, but as far as my friends go, nobody can really get more credit than Paul, a fact I’ve never really told him (fuck! I’m crying now!). Paul never made me feel like I was a bad person because I was unable to stop drinking. He always seemed to understand that it was like any other addiction; for instance, his own reliance on cigarettes. Now, he never said that to me, but his actions and the way he treated me suggest he thought that way. He never told me I needed to stop, or slow down (that might sound reckless to you, but it’s my philosophy that “intevention” methodologies are counteractive. Making somebody feel like shit never chased an addiction out of their skin, a philosophy my parents also seemed to share, which is another big reason I think I’m alive today); when I would, on rare occasions, talk to him about my addiction and my fear relating to it (being in the grip of an addiction to a mind-altering substance is absolutely terrifying), he was understanding and helpful, never demeaning or judgmental, but forthright and honest in ways that showed a maturity and understanding that I’m not sure I could master even now, at age 34.
I still remember the day I decided—firmly, absolutely—that I could get sober, and that I would go to rehab and attempt to live the rest of my life and not die ASAP. I was at the apartment of Paul and his girlfriend at the time, Shelley. I was drinking, but I wasn’t sad, I was just talking to them about being addicted, and how much it sucked. I’ll never be sure which one of them said it first, but someone said, “Why don’t you just go to rehab?”, and they said it so…normally. Like it was just something you could do, if you wanted. Now, obviously the time was right, and there were plenty of other factors and people that contributed to that moment in time, but I said, “OK. I’m going to!” And I got the phone book and called a rehab and reserved a bed, that very afternoon, and then called my mom and dad (by then, that was two seperate phone calls) and told them “I’m going to rehab“. It would be close to a year by the time I celebrated my final sobriety date of April 3rd, but that afternoon in Paul’s apartment stands out as the beginning of the beginning. And he’s been so beautifully understanding and intuitive in regards to my sobriety. He was my first friend to order an alcoholic beverage when out to dinner with me; it was time, I was OK with it, and he just knew. He knew that at that point I’d prefer him to do what he’d normally do. It was more important to me that I not feel like the freak. He was the first friend of mine who seemed to understand that I hadn’t really changed; sure, I had always been known as the guy who drinks all the time, but the core me was the same and now more me than before; the diseased filter had simply been removed. Many friends felt the need to treat me, for a few years, like a kid who had just barely recovered from Leukemia. Paul seemed to know that was unnecessary, and just kept treating me like the same guy from before, only without a drink in my hand.
I would love (really, I would) to just keep writing and writing and tell tons of little stories from our lives together. Paul and I have lots of great stories. But maybe I’ll just hit some highlights (and maybe there will be more blogs like this in the future…I feel as though I could write a book. Tonight. In two hours. But anyway, the highlights):
—Paul and I share an intense love for two bands: Seven Mary Three and Hey Rosetta! And these loves mark two distinct eras in our lives: college (7m3) and now (HR). In an intereting twist, the first TWO times I saw both these bands, it was Paul and I together (along with others). And these were amazing experiences that have shaped my idea of how concert-going should feel: like you are touching the hand of god. It rarely is that good, but it is an ideal to strive for. In many other ways, Paul and I’s musical tastes diverge, but they align where it counts. (hey Paul…the trip to see 7m3 in York…remember D’Marco Farr? And please always remember, I called the opener in DC (“Peel”), and also, remember that fancy restaurant you picked for us to eat at in Ithaca, NY, the night we saw Hey Rosetta!? That night was the beginning of my ongoing love affair with the Americano. But I now drink them iced.)
–The Chair of Good and Evil. Paul and I found a horrid, ratty, falling-apart recliner by a dumpster when we lived in college. For reasons unbeknownst to us, we took it into our dorm room. It really was a horrible chair. It’s existence to us was more of a joke than anything else. We wrote all over it in magic marker. Quotes from movies, things we said all the time, lines from 7m3 songs (“A little motivation goes a long way down, down, down.”) I somehow got the chair to my dad’s house for a year or two after college, but I’m sure it’s long gone by now.
–Remember that dorm room I mentioned? Yeah, we got kicked out of it.
–“Circus Midgets Ate My Balls”. That’s all I’m saying about that.
–Movies we watched dozens or even hundreds of times together, even if they weren’t that good: “Friday”, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, “The Borrowers“, “Mallrats”.
–The first time I visted Paul after I got sober and moved to New Jersey, we played golf and I beat him. Which is the only time I can remember beating him at anything other than MarioKart. So I bring it up here again, even 8 years later. The gloating continues.
–I had the disctinct pleasure of giving the toast at Paul’s wedding to his fantastic wife, Liz. I have never felt more honored in my life, and that honor continues to this day.
–Paul is a big Baltimore Orioles fan, so for his “bachelor party”, fellow Paul bud “Mello” Cory Kelso and I took him to an Orioles game, making the odd fact true: the last major league baseball game I attended was a Baltimore Orioles game.
–Mr. Turnpike, Nature Boy, and the Wise Guy (Man) in the Back Seat
–Ham on Both Ends
–Aint got me on tape.
I love you, Paul. You continue to be the model for the type of man I want to be. Thank you for being part of my life (and helping to save it).
L-R, Paul, Me, Davey (code names: Mr. Turnpike, Wise Guy in the Back Seat, Nature Boy)
Davey, me, and Paul, the first time we ever saw Hey Rosetta!, in Ithaca, NY.
Picture of Paul on the day I beat him at golf. He sucked that day.
I get a fair amount of ribbing for looking serious in photographs all the time. As if there was something wrong with some occasional seriousness. You know, just because you make the same goofy face every time someone takes your picture, doesn’t mean you’re always having an exceptional amount of fun, or you are eccentric or arty. It just means you’re afraid to look like yourself.
Then Paul said:
“occasional” is where you miss the point here. Damn near all you pictures are with you looking serious. If looking like yourself means like a self absorbed douchebag, then you’ve been spot on. However, some people that love you would love to see you actually look happy in moments you’ve chosen to freeze in time. Wipe that damn smug look off your face and accept that you’re ribbed as a subtle way of saying “say cheese”. Smiling is looking like yourself as well. I hate how I look when smiling in true moments of joy, but it is a part of myself and what I look like. If you’re posing for a picture, it’s not real anyway…….are any of us real anyway? Does time cruel march allow us to even enjoy the moments we pass?
I was afraid this would happen. Right before I clicked the “publish” button, I thought to myself, “you should probably clarify this a little bit or people will think this means you’re against smiling”, but I was late for the Harlem Globetrotters, so I said fuck it.
I’m not even remotely close to talking about smiling at all in my original post. Perhaps you (Paul or any of you) don’t have as many friends as I do who literally make a fucked-up face every time someone takes their picture, but I have more than a handful. Every time someone snaps their picture, they make a face like someone just walked in on them taking a dump, or like they’re looking in a mirror for boogers up their nose. And hey, if that’s how you want to look in pictures, fine, go for it. I was just letting them know it annoyed me. I have a blog so that I can occasionally vent about the things that annoy me. And when people are constantly making bizarre faces in photographs, it is literally NOT what they normally look like. I would like at least a few pictures of what you normally look like. Smiling or not.
I’m far from being “anti-smile”, and I wanted to clear up any confusion that original post may have caused. Smiling certainly makes oneself look like oneself (and I deny that ‘damn near all’ my pictures are non-smiling; just the most recent ones, because I’ve just been having fun with them. Expect more. I’m a vain prick, and although I’m hilarious, I’m also serious as a motherfucker, and lately I like looking serious as a motherfucker) just as much as a serious picture. Really my blog entry earlier this afternoon was just aimed at weirdos who won’t stop making King Kong booger-finder faces. Whether it makes them happy or not, it annoys the shit out of me.
(OK now, let me clear up the next misunderstanding: I am not always anti weird faces! Geez people, give me a break! I’m just talking about people who make the same weird face all the time!)
Oh, and did you really have to call me a self-absorbed douchebag?
Here are some pictures of me smiling relatively recently (Number 4: smiling while serious):
That's my freakin' niece (Paul's daughter Ella)
With nephews Aiden and Ethan
This is me being so attractive it stopped traffic.
Time is of great concern to me. It always has been. The movement of it, the steady march of it. The relentlessness of it. I don’t think I fear death greatly; not more than is normal. I don’t think I fear getting old; not more than is normal. Nor is it a great desire to “live in the past”; I love the present and the future. But it is a kind of mournfulness for the past; for moments passed; for selves I once was and other people once were. An acknowledgement—however sideways-glanced and barely-thought about—of the frivolity of crafting a life if it all ends up in memories and tall tales told amongst friends in once-a-year get-back-togethers in Applebee’s. Here is a picture of me as a little boy at the beach:
I’m a happy man but thinking about time makes me sad. Happy people can get sad, sometimes, when they think about the right things. I miss things. I regret things. There are things I would do different and things I would hold on to. You should have these things, too. Life is not so simple for it to be otherwise.
I’ve written lots of poems about time over the years, but this one is my favorite. I wrote it in 2003:
Bother With Hours
Things which slowly trickle down
like snow, taxes, or a frown
arrive in fragments of desire
like matches held up to a fire.
This was almost evident
in the way the hours went
as you sat there, humming softly,
fanning flies and drinking coffee.
Why bother with hours, I saw you thinking, in this day of moments, sinking?
If seconds piling aren’t enough
the minutes stack up like a bluff.
And then you stood, and blinked your eyes.
Imagine the size of my surprise!
That moment trickled by as well
and landed where the others fell.
Here is a picture of me, just a few days after finally getting sober for good, at my mother’s house in New Jersey, petting my favorite cat, Angel. She’s dead now.
It’s this “new year’s” balderdash that’s got me so honed in on time. Every year new year’s rolls around and people talk about it like it means something, and every year I just understand it less and less. Time always moves for me. I’m always marking new beginnings, sudden endings, tiny whirlpools and eddys of time, memory, sensation. Existence for me glides through pockets of variation, like a plane through turbulence and smooth air. I can’t imagine something more meaningless toward my greater understanding of life than a calendar date. But I also rarely talk about “days”. You will be hard pressed to hear me say “I had a bad day”; I will tell you a bad event just happened to me (if I tell you about it at all). The rising and setting of the sun, the ticking off of dates in a month, are not the markers that I live within.
This is my dad teaching me how to ride a bike:
When I first got serious about writing poetry, for a short while, I thought I might be a fancy poet. It turns out it’s too difficult to be a fancy poet, but I got away with a few good ones while I was at it. Here is a fancy one I wrote about “time” that I think is brilliant but nobody else has ever seemed to care for.
Ebbing
The line passively rocks,
the weight of warm wool socks
freshly laundered. Now dry.
I suddenly ask why
I can picture the wool
in the washer, still full.
You don’t get it, do you? Don’t you hate when you’re the only one who *gets* your own stuff? Does that happen to everyone, or just bad fancy poets? When do you think we stop being the people we thought we were going to be? Of course there’s nothing wrong with not ending up the way you envisioned—frankly I’m glad I’m not currently sitting in my university office between classes and writing my academic manuscript about some horrid Greek epic poem—but the way we change is absolutely fascinating. Slowly, steadily, influenced by who-knows-how-many waxing and waning forces. My friends and family, the books I read, the TV shows blaring in the background that I only think I’m ignoring, the weather outside, the paint on the wall. Over the long, slow crawl of time, they all have their way. How much is me, and how much is them? Where did the old me go?
As far as I’m aware, the only surviving picture of me actually drinking from the first few years of my “addictive drinking”. Aged approximately 22.
I love who I am now, but I mourn the fact that today’s version of me will someday pass, as well. And I don’t mean death (although that, too), but just change, and that persistent drummer of time and the cosmic forces of influence, will drag me, almost without me noticing, into being a completely new and different man. I will no doubt be very happy being that new man, but I will look back with a sad fondness on the loss of this current version of me. I may even look back on this blog entry and think, What a fool he was. And I’ll probably be right. It is my experience that New-Version Seth is almost always smarter than Old-Version Seth.
Every 13 year old has fake vogue fights with their sister.
Portrait
Nature has a slow divinity.
Its blight and bounty bend
hushed with eons;
a single leaf swoops slowly
to join the dawdling portrait
beneath the blooming pews.
Nobody’s ever mentioned that poem to me, either. I also wrote that one in 2003. It is very fancy. Now that is a poem that can’t get it’s mind off of “time”. If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s really quite amazing.
One wonders how others view them after we are gone from their lives. What has the passage of time done to their perception of me? How do they remember the time that our lives intersected?
My first formal dance, with my first girlfriend. I cut her out, as it is considered bad form to post pictures of others on the internet, especially old ones like this, without asking. And I could ask her, but who knows how she thinks about me now?
Certainly there is probably a disconnect between how I view the past and how others who have shared experiences with me view the past. Perhaps some women that I still love never think about me, and others who I barely recall think of me often. How important is this to you? I find I am rarely bothered by the thought that others may view our past unfavorably, or differently than I do. Although the possibility of being completely forgotten seems to sting. Has time really rendered me that inconsequential? Have your husband and children completely erased three glorious summers, or even one sublime 15 minute car ride through sun-drenched countryside? Where do those shelved moments exist for you, now? How easily can you reach them, retrieve them, feel something of their ecstasy? They are still real. I am not afraid to admit that they are still real. The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. All moments are right there, right there, within your grasp. Are they not?
I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
song lyrics by Tim Baker
I’ve been asleep for a long, long time.
Blonde hair to brown, and brown to white.
My mom is buried beside my dad,
but I was asleep for all of that.
I shut my eyes for a moment’s rest,
’cause I get so tired.
But what things transpired while my body slept
and beset my mind?
The schools that we went to have all been closed,
and all of my teachers are dead I suppose.
The songs that we sung have all gone quiet.
What happens below as we sleep at night?
The river’s up, the reeds are caught
halfway across what never was.
The water rose and swept in slow.
When the reeds awoke, they were half below.
So. That was a pretty insane trip home (and lots of other places). I’m not even sure where to begin. This may end up being a ridiculously long and disjointed blog entry. I apologize in advance. If it ends up not being extremely long and disjointed, I will come back and delete this intro, and you will never read it.
First, I should like to thank my family (Dad, Mom, Sister) for their various forms of hospitality and much-needed displays of unconditional love. Yay human spirit and the familial bond! I feel pretty damn good about my family. You guys rule! And thank you to all my friends who made me feel as if I never moved away. I am blessed beyond belief with deep, intense, loyal friendships! In addition, a big frowny face to those who I had to miss on this trip (most notably, loyal blog reader and renowned Muse, Cory. Little does she know, my next trip home is going to be so all about her, she will have to call the cops on me. And the truly lovely Mercedes, whom I am unabashedly smitten with. Also, on-again-off-again blog reader Tiff, who I had *promised* a certain something to…well, next time, ok???). I was stretched a little thin to do and see everything and everyone I wanted, but it was fairly satisfying nonetheless.
My Zany Itinerary
Let me just show you the zaniness of where I’ve been the last week and a half. I am going to include tomorrow, as I go to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a work seminar. Here’s where I was, for the most part, the last ten days:
3/25: Erie, PA/ Carlisle, PA
3/26: Carlisle, PA/ Asbury Pary, NJ
3/27: Mantua, NJ
3/28: Brooklyn, NY/ Newark, NJ
3/29: Manhattan, NY/ Mantua, NJ
3/30: Mantua, NJ/ Carlisle, PA
3/31: Carlisle, PA
4/1: Carlisle, PA
4/2: Carlisle, PA/ Erie, PA
4/3: Erie, PA
4/4: Pittsburgh, PA
4/5: Pittsburgh, PA/ Erie, PA
And I aint even tired yet. Bring. It. On.
My Newville Tour
Early on in my trip, I had a little extra time to kill early in the morning, and I drove into Newville (the small town I grew up in) and walked around the town for the first time in many years (I have been there plenty as of late, but not actually walked around). I took some pictures of major landmarks in my life, also making sure to get a few pictures of some of the places that have played large parts in some of my blog entries. Here is a bit of a pictorial tour of Newville:
My first house, 66 Big Spring Avenue. My bedroom was the top two windows on the right of the picture.
I have been trying to upload the famous picture of my mother and I admiring my grandmother’s garden, but I am having some trouble, so here is a link to that picture on Facebook. And here is a picture of that back yard area today:
One of my most popular blog entries ever was “The Fruit that Ate Itself“, about me being bullied in a local church yard. I snapped some pics of that area in current day:
The church yard itself.
The line of trees is where the dreaded swingset and slide had been.
The Senior Center where the "fight" ended. Those are the bushes I flew through in the climactic moment.
If you’ve read my blog entry “Down the Rabbit Hole“, you may be interested to see this cellar door on one of my childhood neighbor’s homes:
OK, so just a few more pics here, but not related to any previous blog, just some Seth-historic stuff:
The very spot where I got on a school bus for the very first time.
This was my corner when I was a crossign guard.
Friendies
I had almost too much fun with friendies to try to sum things up here. I’ll hit some highlights:
I surprised Kate with my presence not once but twice, and she lost. her. shit. each time. First, Michael and I surprised her at her house:
It was also on this visit that this picture of Michael happened:
A few days later, I was strolling through Carlisle wasting a few minutes before picking up another friend, when I came across Kate and her family at the local eatery The Green Room. As I was leaving them I took this pic of Kate, her husband Matt, and their son Dylan:
Let me just take this moment to say, as I was strolling around Carlisle that night, I was struck by just how freaking cool of a town it is. Those of you who still live there, please do not take it for granted. First, it is totally adorable. And such a great pedestrian town! And for a relatively small town in central Pennsylvania, it is arts-friendly. Open mic nights, free music, poetry readings, public displays of photography, and on and on, are quite common. The area known as the square and the surrounding blocks are humming with a vibrant intellectual life (not to mention some fantastic cuisine). Please partake of what the gem of a town has to offer!
My brief time with Burke was spent in some fairly intense conversation that may, in fact, make me think about my life differently. Oh, and Johnny Depp is a fucking sellout.
I spent some truly hilarious time with Jenny. Jenny is quickly becoming a Major Friend. (if her name is unfamiliar to you, this was the last woman to be an “official girlfriend”…and if my hunch is true– that I am a lifetime bachelor– she may go down in the history books as the last woman to be an official Seth girlfriend…what a distinction!). Anyway, I sure do love this woman. She has the special ability to make me laugh until I am worried about my health…without saying anything. She has a non-verbal humor akin to Kramer. She can just look at me and I lose my shit. Here we are, loving life:
Of course, you know I saw Michael, and it resulted in a moment of hilarity that I am pretty sure you “had to be there” for, but we decided that Merle Haggard had at one point recorded the “classic” song “You’re Gonna Make Daddy Fart (and Momma Aint Gonna Be Happy)”. I still laugh when I type that.
Mary and I had one helluva time trying to find parking in downtown Harrisburg—notable because it’s usually not THAT hard. Sure, those few blocks in the very center of town are tough, but we were unable to find ANY spots on the street ANYWHERE. When we finally did park (in a garage) we ended up just hanging around Strawberry Square , when in fact we had intended to go to the Susquehanna Art Museum. I’m still not sure in the least how this distraction occurred, but we had a blast. But the major news from this venture is that Mary has OK’d some photographs of herself! You may or may not know that pictures of Mary are quite rare. She just hates pictures of herself, and of course I love taking pictures of people, so this is a friction. Plus, she really is one of the most exquisite women in existence, so I always feel as though the world in general is being deprived of some joy by the absence of Mary pictures. When I take a Mary picture, I have to show her, wheneupon she then either insists on immediate deletion, OKs the picture for my own personal collection but not anyone else’s eyes, or (the most rare) OKs a picture for online distribution. So here, lucky world, are 4 new Mary pictures:
That's the back of Mary's head in the lower right.
Staying at Dad’s
It is with much chagrin that I realize I did not take a single picture of my papa and me on this trip. *sad face* Nonetheless, I must say, spending time with my dad just gets more and more pleasant as the two of us age. It never stops surprising me how we continue to grow into friends (while he retains his essential papa-ness). He is one cool dude and we somehow never run out of things to talk about.
This also marked the first time in recent memory that I have stayed at Dad’s for multiple days without my sister also being there. In this sense it was entirely unique. The last time I stayed at my dad’s by myself for more than one night was way back when I was still drinking and on-again, off-again living there. So this was new, and really, really great. In a lot of ways, it felt like a true homecoming, learning how that house and I interact when I’m a grown-up, and sober, and left all alone with it. Turns out we get along just fine. And I sleep magnificently in my old bedroom. But it’s tough getting used to that shower again.
Hey Rosetta!
I’m gonna really have to shrink down the Hey Rosetta! story, or I’ll be here all day. So, in summary:
Here are pictures from Paul and I’s show in Asbury Park, NJ. It was a fantastic time, both Paul-wise (Paul, thanks for helping me see that not all my close friends have to be women!) and band-wise. Really, one of the more satisfying concert-going experiences I’ve had.
Then, I made an audible call and went to see them by myself twice more over the next three days, in New York City (more on NYC later). Long story short, I ended up basically knowing the band. But they started talking to me. I suppose when you are a band that is really famous and successful in Canada, and then you come to the states and are playing bars where most of the people are ignoring you, and there is a short fat guy with gray hair jumping around and screaming your lyrics, when he shows up to your NEXT show in a different state, it is worth taking note. So as I was taking this picture of the chalk board advertising their show in Brooklyn, a few of the band members were walking out of the bar and saw me and introduced themselves.
Because shows like this entail a lot of waiting around (if you insist, like I do, on front row) in small bars with no “backstage” area for bands, as well as lots of changing-out of gear between bands (not to mention trips to very small bathrooms), the two shows in New York would prove extremely fertile ground for me talking to the band. This went way beyond my previous “thank you, your music has meant so much to me” that I’ve been able to give other bands. This was basically a getting-to-know-you situation. Specifically cellist Romesh Thavanathan, lead guitarist Adam Hogan, and violinist Kinley Dowling spoke quite a bit to me and I was definitely on a first-name basis with them by the end of my second New York show, and I’d had a chance to speak to every member of this six-piece band. Certainly, this was fairly incredible, but also….in some ways, not as great as you’d think. Parts of this experience were awkward. I may blog more about this at some point, just because it was pretty intriguing (ever have your favorite band watch you as they are playing?) But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was an amazing experience. Here is a video I took of “Red Song” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, followed by a few select pictures of the New York shows:
I also managed to snag handwritten setlists off the stage two of the three nights. Here are scans of the setlists:
So now, for the benefit of probably just myself and maybe Paul, here is some Hey Rosetta! setlist discussion: on the first setlist shown, Bandages was skipped. On the second shown (from my thrid concert, Manhattan) ‘Bandages’ and ‘Red Heart’ were swapped in position (as were the two songs where a swap is indicated, ‘Yer Spring’ and ‘Welcome’…and talk about a way to open a show! “Lions For Scottie” into “Welcome”!) Here are all three setlists for shows I went to this tour:
Asbury Park, NJ
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Seeds
8. Red Heart
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Welcome
8. Red Song
9. We Made a Pact
10. Seeds
11. Red Heart
12. A Thousand Suns*
*’Bandages’ is on the setlist in the 12 spot, but ‘A Thousand Suns’ was played.
Manhattan, NY
1. Lions For Scottie
2. Welcome
3. Yer Spring
4. New Glass
5. Yer Fall
6. There’s an Arc
7. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
8. Holy Shit
9. New Sum
10. Seeds
11. New Goodbye
Encore:
1. Bandages
2. Red Heart
And now, for the record, the sum total of Hey Rosetta! songs I’ve seen, including the two acoustic shows I saw last year:
1. Red Heart–5 times
2. Bricks–4 times
3. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time–3 times
4. Lions for Scottie–3 times
5. Bandages–3 times
6. New Goodbye–3 times
7. Yer Spring–3 times
8. New Glass–3 times
9. There’s an Arc–3 times
10. Seeds–3 times
11. Seventeen–2 times
12. Red Song–2 times
13. We Made a Pact–2 times
14. Another Pilot–2 times
15. Welcome–2 times
16. A Thousand Suns–1 time
17. Yer Fall–1 time
18. Holy Shit–1 time
19. New Sum–1 time
Mom’s/ Sisters
So my mom now lives with my sister, which makes visiting everybody much easier! It was quite nice to see everybody all at once! In the same breath, however, I must admit it made me feel as though I did a poor job of paying ample attention to everyone. When you are seeing a gaggle of loved ones all at once for the first time in a long time, it can be a strain to give equal time. I think specifically of the nephews, who I love uncontrollably but whom I was not able to give the sort of attention they are accustomed to receiving from me. When it came down to it, my mom and my sister were the center of my focus (not to mention the antics of Pumpkin Latte). Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time! I guess I’m just feeling some guilt, cause those boys worked up a good amount of anticipation for my arrival and I almost certainly dissapointed. That being said, the time with Momma and Sis was marvelous. LOTS of laughs, and a new momma/ son tradition: I claim her and I are going to do the Jumble together, and then I end up freaking out over how amazing she is at it, while I add absolutely nothing to the process (she really is amazing at the Jumble). Also, I “T”d my sister, which always rules. A brief but incredibly heartwarming time. Some select pics:
Sister and Pumpkin Latte, as she was taking their picture
Sis, Me, Mom
New York
The New York trip is another thing I shall have to gloss over, or I’ll be writing this blog entry until next week. I did what I typically do: I drive right into the city, pay a thousand dollars to park, and just walk around. I usually have very little plan other than one or two fairly simple goals. This trip’s goals: see sunrise from inside Central Park, and buy a New York Times from a newsstand and read the whole thing from inside a midtown Manhattan Starbucks during the morning commute hours. I’m not sure why I wanted to do these things, but once the goals were in my mind, I could not seem to let them go. I accomplished both, and although being in Central Park during sunrise was magical, it was not easy to get any great pictures of the event, due to the vast amount of:
a) Tall trees, and
b) skyscrapers
These things blocked the view of the actual sunrise rather effectively, but feeling the world come alive from within the park was quite joyous. Here is the best picture I got of the sunrise:
I spent almost two hours in the Starbucks, enjoying my latte and an incredible issue of the NYT. I suppose for a moment I felt as hip as I’ve always suspected I am. It was a quality time.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around, taking pictures, eating, even napping briefly in the tranquil section of Central Park known as the Woodlands. I also visited, for the first time, the Central Park Zoo, which was a lovely treat. Here is some video I took of the Sea Lions being fed (and putting on a little show) followed by some pictures:
Sunset, Brooklyn
Me in Central Park
Some Things I Learned
1. 8 months is not long enough to forget how to get around (but it IS long enough to cause some occasional navigation confusion)
2. When you are a single man in your 30s who moves away from everyone he knows and doesn’t visit home for 8 months, a surprising amount of people from all demographics will just straight-up ask you about your sex life. This is fodder for an entire blog entry at some point that will be in the form of a “rant”. FYI, nobody need worry about my sex life, mkay?
3. You may think where you live is boring, but leave it for a little while and then come back; you may just find it’s really cool.
4. There are really hot ladies everywhere.
5. Don’t tell people you got fat. You may think it will make your fatness less awkward, but it makes it moreso.
6. Things change. Buildings get knocked down, businesses change their name, streets get re-directed. Accept these things as a natural course of existence. (reminds me of a Hey Rosetta! song: “The schools that we went to have all been closed./ And all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.”)
7. You can walk further than you think you can.
8. If you move and your sports allegiances change a little bit, you can just kinda keep that to yourself on your first few visits home.
9. As you leave places you have stayed for just a day or two, remember to gather all your various “chargers”. We have a lot of chargers in this day and age.
10. Family and friends really are the best things in the world, even if saying so sounds cheesy and cliche. Fuck it, it’s true!
I Almost Forgot…
Today is my 8 year sobriety anniversary! The original purpose of this vacation was for me to have off and see my loved ones leading up to the big day. (I just have to complete my anniversary tradition of watching “Dark Days” on the anniversary itself) So…yay me! But also…yay you! Thanks everybody for putting up with my horribleness when I was horrible, and then helping me live such a satisfying and fantastic life in my sobriety! What a treat, to be able to celebrate the week leading up to it in the way I did. And how neat is it that I almost forgot today was the day??? That must mean life is pretty good. I love you, everybody!
The Hey Rosetta! show in Asbury Park, NJ with Paul was a truly thrilling experience (so much so that I am locked in an intense internal debate over whether to go see them again in Manhattan sometime Monday or Tuesday…I guess you’ll find out via blog post eventually!) I’d type a longer entry about Paul andI’s experience, but I’m on my sister’s laptop and this keyboard and mouse are confounding me. This time, the band was fully electric (you may remember the first two times I saw them, they were acoustic) and it was MINDBLOWING. Paul and I once again got to thank the band and shake their hands, and we both got handwritten copies of the setlist off the stage (I’ll be scanning mine in when I get home). A ball-to-the-wall awesome time. The setlist was:
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Seeds
8. Red Heart
Hello folks!!! As you may or may not have heard, I am writing you from the ol’ homestead of central Pennsylvania (and New Jersey and maybe New York or Philadelphia, at some point). I didn’t give any forewarning on this develppment, as I desperately wanted to avoid having an “appointment” vacation, where I make so many plans with people I no longer seem to posses free will. I want to visit home but also have an actual vacation. I mean…I work real hard.
Anyway, you won’t (probably) be hearing from me much in the interim, although before I left Erie I set up a few blogs to post automatically (mostly the recurring blogs with days in their names…Monday’s Song, etc) so we won’t feel my absence entirely. I just wanted to put that out there in case you happen to know I’m in the middle of a 5 hour drive and an Audio Poem posts, you know I’m not doing that shit from my car!
I had a perfect day yesterday, seeing my dad in the morning, some terrific friends (Michael and Kate) in the afternoon, and then having a near-flawless road trip with Paul to see a mind-blowing Hey Rosetta! (not to mention getting to meet Paul’s precious brand-new son, Parker). Paul: we somehow seem to have more to talk about with each other than we did as younger men, plus we laugh even more. What a rare quaility. You’re a gem, sir.
I’m off to New Jersey now (I know…I was just there yesterday, but I promise, it’s not the same town) to see my mother, my sister, my nephews, and Pumpkin Latte.
Also, it’s really sunny, and 42 degrees (right now that feels like 70!)
And just wait till you see the pictures I’ve been getting!
So after raving and annoying everyone for the better part of a year about Hey Rosetta!, I finally saw them twice over the weekend, and boy howdy, it did not disappoint! I’ll sum everything up lickety-split: had an awesome time seeing Paul and Davey, saw two great sets of music, met and had conversations with two members of the band (Tim Baker, lead singer and main songwriter, and Romesh Thavanathan, cellist), had those two members sign one of their vinyl albums, spent a relaxing and spiritually fulfilling day on my own leisurely driving from Ithaca to Buffalo then meandering around Buffalo, eating lots of food and taking artsy pictures, then had an even longer conversation with Tim Baker the second night (he came over to me after their set while they were still tearing their equipment down and talked to me from the stage, then asked me to stop by their merchandise booth and talk to him before I left! Then we had a 5 minute conversation before I left which bordered insanely on “friend-like”. It was like walking in a dream. Granted, I’ve only been a fan for a few years, it’s not like this is a major band from my history like Pearl Jam or 7m3, but I don’t think I can deny they’ve vaulted to “favorite band” status, so it was beyond cool!). So there’s a really quick rundown of the weekend.
There was, I suppose, a minor dissapointment. Because Hey Rosetta! was opening for a schmaltzy singer-songwriter lady named Sarah Harmer whose fans aren’t really hard rockers, Hey Rosetta! opted to play sort of “Unplugged” sets on this mini-tour. Parts of this were really cool—the arrangements of these songs like this are actually really, really cool and coupled with the fact that these shows are now very unique in the Hey Rosetta! universe gave these shows a very special and intimate feel (and probably gave Tim Baker much more reason to ask me questions about the show than he normally would have; it was quite clear he wasn’t exactly sure how the whole thing was coming off). However, I can’t deny that there were parts when I wished I could have jumped around and lost my mind. A few of these songs are real blood-pumpers and even though the slow, quiet versions were beautiful, I wanted some loudness! Here is an example of the changes. This first video is the studio version of one of my favorite songs of their, “I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time”. You just have to hear the first 30 seconds or so to get an idea of how it goes:
Now here is video I took at the Buffalo show of the “unplugged” version of the same song. I have no idea why it’s so damn dark, it wasn’t that dark in person! Also my damn batteries ran out halfway through the song (did you read that, Mom?) so you don’t get to see the extremely interesting way they end this version. But still, you can see the extreme difference in the arrangements:
So, you can see it’s a very cool version. I feel pretty special having seen these versions, but now I just need to see the electric set! here are the setlists:
Ithaca setlist
1. 17 (new song)
2. Red Song
3. Brick (new song)
4. I’ve Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time
5. Lions for Scottie
6. Red Heart
7. Bandages (new song)
Buffalo setlist
1. 17 (new song)
2. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
3. Brick (new song)
4. Red Song
5. Lions For Scottie
6. We Made a Pact
7. Bandages (new song)
Here is video I took of “Red Song” in Ithaca. This is not a different version of the song; this is the studio version:
I need to thank my buddies Paul and Davey for making the weekend so special; we’ve agreed to have a similar outing once every 6 months. It’s good to rekindle things. Anyone else want to rekindle? Oh and I now have a new codename. It’s no longer Wise Guy in the Backseat, but M.R. Science. That’s not mister science, but the letter M and R, like the M.R. Ducks t-shirt. I dig it.
Anyway, I had a much more artisitic and heartfelt blog entry in mind, but I am just burnt out, so this will have to do. Here are a bunch of pictures from all phases of the weekend. (I originally posted about 3 times as many photos but WordPress is being weird. This will have to suffice; also a few of the captions are acting weird, my apologies.)
Me with Tim Baker at Castaways in Ithaca, NY.
Paul with Tim Paul and Davey at Castaways in Ithaca
First attempt to get a picture of all three of us. My head looks like a peanut.
Success! My head looks like a peanut.
The vinyl that Tim and Romesh signed for me. That's Tim who wrote the sentence.
Here’s some pictures from my big Hey Rosetta! weekend. It was a totally freakin amazing weekend in lots of ways. I’ll have a bigger blog about it tomorrow but thought I’d put some pics up now. *yawn* I am so totally sleeping 14 hours!
Me with Tim Baker, lead singer!
Oh yeah, I got all artsy when I had time to kill in Buffalo
Found some interestng sights on the drive from Ithaca to Buffalo
First picture of me, Paul, and Davey together at the same time in many years. My head looks like a peanut.
I know most of you are probably sick of hearing me blather on about the incredible amazing fantastic band Hey Rosetta! And it looks like, very soon, I may be able to rein in the salivating.
Barring any unforeseen craziness, (read: snow) I should be seeing the band live TWICE this coming weekend: Friday in Albion, NY and Saturday in Buffalo, NY. They’re opening for a singer/ songwriter named Sarah Harmer who I haven’t heard of before and who I still haven’t been able to really familiarize myself with, although most of her music seems to sound like this (click ‘preview track’). In short–not bad, but not exciting. Having read her wikipedia page, it seems she may in fact be rather famous in some circles. I just aint in dem circles.
ANYWAY, the mondo super exciting element of this New York excursion is the fact that the first concert, in Ithaca, will be being attended not only my myself but by two of my longest-held dudefriends, Paul (codename: Mr. Turnpike) and Davey (codename: Nature Boy). It’s been yeeeaaaarrrs since the 3 of us hung out at the same time, and even longer than that since we went on an exciting road trip together (it should be noted that the three of us essentially invented the “exciting road trip”, so this is really like a comeback tour for us.) Paul and I will be spending Friday night in a hotel in a town close to Ithaca (the town of Painted Post, NY), with Paul leaving early the next morning to head back to PA to play in a championship game in his flag football league (Davey will just be going home Friday after the show, as he lives in upstate NY and Painted Post is the opposite direction from his house.) While Paul drives home to play in his football game, I’ll be driving to Buffalo, NY, to see Hey Rosetta! a second time on Saturday night, this time by myself! If this all seems confusing (and you for some reason give a crap) I am prepared to provide you with maps of all three of our movements.
First, on Friday afternoon, I will be driving from Erie to Painted Post, NY, to meet Paul at our hotel. Here’s what that looks like.
Likewise, Friday afternoon, Paul will leave from central PA to Painted Post, NY, to meet me at the hotel. At the moment I can’t remember where his work is located, so I’ve got him leaving from Carlisle.
Around this same time, Nature Boy Christopher Davey will be leaving his home in the city of Oswego, NY and heading to the town the concert is in–Ithaca, NY. This is Davey’s trip.
After meeting at the hotel, Paul and I will travel together from Painted Post to Ithaca.
Then the three of us are meeting, having dinner, and going to the show, which will look kind of amazing, like this:
That might sound overly complicated to you, but I think maybe I’ve just over-explained it. The point is that I am really, really excited about this trip. I am more excited to see Hey Rosetta! than I have been to see a band since the first time I saw Pearl Jam in 2000. Add to that an excursion with two lifelong pals–well, it might be awesome, but it also sounds like the beginning of a movie…
So, barring it turning into “Judgment Night” (and if it meant we got to hang out with Jeremy Piven, I might even be OK with that), it’s gonna be a great two days!!
(for the record, my codename is Wise Guy in the Back Seat OR Wise Man in the Back Seat, depending which one of them you ask. You can imagine this is the kind of nickname an alcoholic comes by. Luckily it’s too damn long for anyone to ever really call me it!)
1. Seriously now, what is up with neckties? I just don’t even understand why they exist.
2. I’ve got nothing against this Justin Beiber guy, but I really really hope he knows it’s not going to last. Does nobody notice that our culture requires a new, mid-to-late teens super-mega-squeaky-clean star every 3 to 4 years? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers are not gone, but they’re fading, and I feel bad for these kids that almost (I said almost) certainly will not be able to make a transition to an adult career in entertainment.
3. So I’ve waited years to get back in touch with you, wondering where you are, how things are going and, yes, what you look like. Not out of (solely) my continued attraction to you, but simple curiosity: nobody knows better than I how interestingly years change a person’s looks. So after once-monthly searches on Facebook for two solid years (and the same on MySpace for 5 years before that) I see you have finally made a facebook account, and I quickly request you. Except, when I am finally able to look at your pictures, there’s not a single picture of you. There are 50 pictures of your kids (I’m happy you have kids you enjoy, but I give about zero shits about kids I’ve never met and who have no idea who I am), 20 pictures of your pets, and three albums of the house you had built. But not a single picture of you. I friend requested you, not “Old Friend’s Kids”. C’mon, you haven’t really disappeared completely into them, have you?
4. Number 3 was not about a specific person, but something that I’ve experienced a few times. Stop thinking it was harsh, you know you’ve thought it, too. And Paul, really, don’t argue with me.
5. I now get home delivery of The New York Times. Let me tell you, there is no reason to get any other newspaper, ever, anywhere. This thing is amazing. Every copy–daily–has more information in it than a copy of TIME and Entertainment Weekly put together. I’m especially impressed by their daily entertainment coverage; I might seriously not resubscribe to Entertainment Weekly. Plus–and this is what really, REALLY tickles me—most days, there is no sports section. The sports are in the entertainment section. (guess what folks> That’s what sports are!) As I’ve said again and again recently, my demonization of sports is over as I find myself more and more drawn to them, but devoting a third of a newspaper or televised newscast to sports still seems like the work of a bestial culture. I wanted to hug The New York Times when I realized how they did it!
6. Along the lines of sports, now that my head is back in that realm, I feel I need to make clear, here in a public forum, my official favorite teams in the three sports I care about (eff basketball, though I’ll probably end up going to a few of Erie’s semi-pro team, the Erie Bayhawks, cause why not?). Here are my 3 favorite teams in each sport, IN ORDER:
Baseball 1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Cleveland Indians
3. Washington Nationals
Hockey
1. Columbus Blue Jackets
2. Philadelphia Flyers
3. Buffalo Sabres
Football
1. Philadelphia Eagles
2. Buffalo Bills
3. Baltimore Ravens
7. I saw a convoy of plows driving down the highway today, even though it hasn’t snowed yet. Winter can suck it. (I know I sound bitchy tonight but these can’t all be rainbows and angel farts, you know.)
1. Oh hi, billhanna. I see you ‘liked’ goatees on Facebook yesterday. Our adversarial relationship about facial hair will continue to the grave. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
2. Anyone who knows Tasha, check out the link, she just got a radical new haircut! I love it!
3. I have quite few friends who are talented musicians—one of them is the great Bootney Lee (real name Ryan Straub). I double-dare you to click on the link and check his music out.
4. Guess who I’m going to see next month, as the three of us meet up in central New York for a Hey Rosetta! show??? Well that would be none other than my life-long buddies Paul and Davey! (he’s Chris Davey, but we call him Davey). This is going to be exceptional as it’s been a few years since we were together, all 3 of us. And did I mention it’s a Hey Rosetta show??? I still haven’t seen them live–the shows I was supposed to go to awhile back had to be skipped because life is like that. I am uber pumped for this!
5. It has been way too long since I tagged my friend Amanda. I mean that just like it sounds, too.
6. You know who rules? My mom! She just quit smoking!!! Raise the roof!
7. I’m still tickled pink about the Doctor Strange drinking glass that Tony Magni gave me as a going away present when I moved to Erie. Thanks Tony!
8. My friend Denise has a very under-appreciated photo blog. Click to link to check it out!!! She’s way talented!
9. The lovely Sarah P. has just had a baby! Huzzah! She doesn’t have any sort of online presence so I’ve linked to a picture of Big Ben, which is in England, which is where I met her!
10. My dad is one cool mofo. What’s my evidence? Every single day I become more and more like him, and I am most definitely one cool mofo. Dad, we are some cool dudes!
11. I tag Ron all the damn time, I aint saying anything about him!
12. Big days for my buddy Burke, who has just started going back to school while also remaining a steadfast David Hasselhoff fan. Kudos, wanker!
13. I could probably talk about Mary all day, but I’m pretty sure she’d friend-disown me. She dislikes scrutiny.
14. My dear, dear friend Michael (that’s a lady named Michael) sent me the most lovely letter in the mail yesterday. She sure is a freaking great friend!! It was quite touching, it brought a tear to my eye. Everyone should have a friend like Michael!
15. California buddy Kyle is finally off the unemployment and working at a bank!!! Yay Kyle! Now: no more excuses for sneaking into movies, you heathen!
16. My freaking cool-as-shit sister just got a job working at a law firm! What what! Dellingers can do anything!!! Click the link to read her badass blog!
17. Also in the world of talented musician friends of mine: Duane, who records under the name DreamlandNoise. Click the link for just a small sampling of his superb “space funk”.
18. What to say about my girl Cory? She recently moved back to central PA, like, RIGHT after I left it. *frown face* She’s just the shiznit in every way, and is quite a talented artist. I’ve linked to some of her art but you might not be able to see it if you’re not FB friends with her. Which would be your loss.
Note: the following blog is a response to a challenge by my friend Denise to write a blog explaining my interpretation of the lyric “It takes an ocean not to break” from the song “Terrible Love” by the band The National. So I have written the blog. She said she was going to as well but I haven’t read hers yet, so as to not taint my own. Just let me say, this entry may make it sound like I’m depressed, but I promise I’m not. I am happy as a clam in pigshit! (I swear) I have pasted a YouTube clip of the song before the text in case you might want to listen to it while reading it. I’d suggest you do. I may be biased, but when I listen to this song while reading this entry, I cry like a damned fool.
I’ve gotten so fat, he thought. I can’t keep pretending it’s just cause I quit smoking. It’s been nine months. He stood in front of a framed movie poster, nude, rubbing his jutting belly affectionately. The truth was, he liked it. It was simply more of him that had never been there before. Extra him.
He moved through the apartment, listless, fidgety, afraid to be bored. He kept stopping in front of various framed posters, admiring his jawline, his sexy stare. I quite like my hairline, he thought, for the dozenth time that day.
Suddenly he sat Indian-style on the carpet and began frantically paging through the photo album until he came upon a picture of her. Ah…her. Yes, always back to her. It no longer hurt like it used to, but it still hurt. But this hurt was more like a dull memory of an acute pain, and it was somehow mildly pleasing. Like peeling up just the edge of a large scab; as long as you don’t peel it all the way back, you’re fine.
He’d always made a habit out of looking at her pictures, but nowadays it was much less frequent. She’s still breathtaking, he thought. Then aloud to himself: “At least now she’s quiet company.” He chuckled. There was a time not so many years ago when he had hated her.
She had broken him, for a time. Really broken him. But then again, he thought, I’ve been broken in so many ways, so many times. Who could pinpoint the source of a fracture? Or the exact time we mended? I’ve been broken by women, money, gin, friends. He chuckled. Seems the only thing that’s there every time is me. How’s the saying go? “Point the finger right at me” or something like that.
He put a shirt on and walked toward the kitchen, pondering what it meant to be broken, what it meant to be fixed. Seemed maybe the whole of life was a series of being almost broken and finding a way toward fixed; of bending but not breaking. Suddenly he pictured himself as a bendy straw—built to be almost-broken.
He opened his fridge to get some Diet Dr. Pepper. As the interior light flicked on it illuminated the collage frame he had hung on his kitchen wall. Four differently sized frames connected together in a neat shape, so one could display four different pictures of loved ones or dogs or cars or whatever you wanted on your wall. He’d bought it at Wal-Mart for 2 bucks.
There was the picture of his dad, probably taken a decade earlier. The man was wearing sweat pants and a sweat shirt and was making the world’s groggiest face. It made him smile, this picture of his dad, looking at him from five hours and ten years away. This dad who would always love him, no matter what.
And beside it, his mother—that loving, knowing, forgiving grin spread across her face in the parking lot of some Kohl’s department store in New Jersey somewhere. Who’d have ever guessed she’d be there, too, staring into his fridge? And below her, his sister, and beside her his friend Paul, shooting a pool cue and smiling into the camera, as if to say, I’m always going to be here, buddy.
And he turned around and suddenly imagined photographs of all his friends and family spread out across all his kitchen walls. Every inch covered by pictures of people who would and had always stood by him. Even the light switches were covered. Despite his fears of seeming cheesy or—God forbid—sentimental, tears welled up in his eyes as he realized how much love swirled around his life. He did not wipe the tears away, and through the moisture of his eyes it appeared everyone he knew was bobbing around on some four-cornered sea in his kitchen, smiling at him, blowing him kisses, clinging to desperate life rafts. He breathed in deep, said “It takes an ocean not to break.”
I know, I know, I can hear what you’re saying, fearless, intrepid readers: how dare I give you such exhaustive detail of all the activity leading up to the move and then abandon you for DAYS as the event unfolds? It must have been like the cruelest of television season-ending cliffhangers! Well, eff you. Life got in the way of blogging.
(I don’t know why the Erie Journals have a tone of distaste for you, the loyal reader. I swear, I love you. It’s just the tone these entries seem to want to take!)
Anyway, as usual, I’m gonna have to skim over some details because just too much has happened since I posted last. You saw the picture entries of the move itself, and I would like to once again thank Burke, Paul, Liz and Michael for helping me move. Also, thanks go to Mom and Mary for helping me clean, Dad for letting me crash at his house at a very crucial and odd moment for me, Duane for his last minute computer help, and probably somebody else who helped and I’m forgetting and I’m sorry I’m forgetting you. I truly do have some amazing friends and family!
Long story short, the move was difficult. It essentially went off as I had planned—and believe it or not, I consider myself something of a good planner—but what I never considered during my planning was that there was very little time for me to sleep, recover, and be sane. And despite that, I would have made it work if it hadn’t for some godawful reason taken Michael and I eight hours to drive back from Erie after unloading all my stuff into my new apartment. It was like we drove into some sort of black hole/time warp/weird thing. I just kept driving that U-Haul, pointing forward and pressing the gas, and it was like nothing was happening…
So anyway, that drive forced me to change my plans a tad, and instead of ending up here in Erie Thursday morning, I rolled in here around 10:30 Thursday night. So yeah, the plan had to be altered. Still. I claim this as a triumph in my life, as I single-handedly planned all of it. This is not an attempt to be egotistical here folks. Those that have known me since my teen years will know this is just a monumental achievement!
I’ll tell you what was friggen strange was walking into this apartment in Erie Thursday night. It was dark. A thunderstorm had just passed through. The world was chilly but not cold, and becalmed, and silent with a hint of breeze. I’d just been here, in this apartment the day before, but that had been in blazing sunlight, with one of my best friends, doing heavy, sweaty work and grunting and counting to three and lifting. So now I approach the front door for the first time ever in darkness, and I am all alone, and I am not going “home” that night, and it is quiet everywhere as my brand new key jingles in the lock and I open the unfamiliar door and the room is pitch black and all I can smell is fresh paint and the afterscent of rain and I get lucky guessing where the light switch is and the overhead light pops on and there in the midst of all this unfamiliarity is, quite all of a sudden, the entirety of my belongings, sitting in a massive disarray, exactly how Michael and I had left them just a little over 24 hours before.
I know that may sound like a NOT great experience, but that is only because I’ve failed as a narrator. Yes, it was surreal, and perhaps somber and disquieitng, but also rather thrilling, not like a roller coaster but my own personal fun house—my life as a hall of mirrors. If, in 24 hours, one’s life can become so utterly different (and yet, so entirely the same), it makes you question just what it is that defines your life. Oddly, during those first few moments inside the apartment door, it became clear to me that stuff does, in fact, play a role in my identity, but thankfully, just not a very large one. It was a relief to feel the sensation flush through me from head to toe that the truly important element in this equation was me, no matter which TV was sitting in the corner (though I loved the fact that it was my TV).
The first few minutes after entering the apartment were a flurry of activity, marked by one observation and two activities. The observation was complete silence. No television, no radio, not even any incoming text messages, and no neighbors making noise of any kind. In such an unfamliar setting, I really did need something. And so my first two activities were: getting the TV hooked up to the DVD player (cable and internet wouldn’t come till the next day) and—actually the very first order of business—getting some blinds up on the two street-facing living room windows. As I said, it was night time and the windows are facing the residential street and the only light I had to work with at this point was the bright overhead light, so I felt very, very exposed. I had actually anticipated this and had even brought two cheapy Wal-Mart vinyl mini-blinds up with me right away. I had never in my life put up a blind of any kind, so less than two minutes after entering the apartment, I was opening and attempting to figure out these blinds. It is perhaps of note that the apartment is FULL of stuff, so I have very little room to work. As a reminder, here was how Michael and I left the living room:
The day before, right before Michael and I left, I measured the windows in anticipation of the blinds, and stopped by Wal-Mart immediately before leaving for Erie that afternoon, to buy the blinds. Well folks, turns out I’m not a champ at measuring. Luckily, I over-measured, so the blinds I bought were too long by about two inches. I did not see this as a problem. Believe it or not, I have a toolbox, and in that toolbox is a saw. So less than ten minutes after getting there, I’ve got these vinyl mini-blinds sitting on those white Gonella bread boxes you see in the picture above and I am sawing one inch off both sides. (mind you, I am just sawing the bar across the top, not the actual blinds. I’m not a maniac!). Amazingly, this worked like a charm and I very quickly had privacy, at least from the street side of the apartment (and only when in the living room).
After that it was the TV, and the couch, as my chair were all entirely buried underneath God-knows-what and I was definitely craving a sit-down. As you can guess by looking at the pic of the living room above, getting the couch to in any reasonable way face a television would require some finagling. But I managed it very quickly. I had procured a few movies from the Redbox in Carlisle before leaving for Erie, and I quickly had the new DeNiro flick “Everybody’s Fine” playing, and I was laying on the couch, and I was just gonna watch a few minutes and then get up and start the long, arduous process of getting the apartment in order because after all, I didn’t really have to sleep at any reasonable time and obviously I had no plans in the near future and then…I was sound asleep. I woke up at 10am the next morning feeling like a million very, very confused bucks. And then the work began.
As this is a fairly long entry already, I’m going to end here for now so as to not tire you out, Fearless Reader. Since everything I’m saying is in the past, it’s not really of the essence to tell it all now, so I’ll bring us up to the present day in an entry tomorrow. Thanks for reading, shitbirds!
Putting the finishing touches on packing. Homies Burke and Paul will be here soon to help me get it on the U-Haul. I still have some stuff on the walls and some stuff to throw out but otherwise I’m mostly done:
I arrived at The Silo in Reading, PA at about 5pm Friday. This was an hour and a half before doors were to open. I always get to shows early, so I can be guaranteed to actually see the action on stage. When you’re as short as I am, you get sick of spending money to look at the back of some dude’s head. However, even I knew that this early arrival was probably unnecessary. If you don’t know alot about Seven Mary Three, let me be the first to tell you, this is no longer a popular band, and they were never more than marginally popular to begin with. They are, by most measures, a one-hit wonder, and time has largely forgotten them. At their peak in the late nineties, 7m3 was playing to sold out crowds at the more premiere, mid-size national act clubs in the country; (such as Trocodero and Seattle’s Showbox) now, touring-wise, they are one step above a bar band (but they are not a bar band yet!). I want to make that clear, before anyone thinks the story I’m about to relate is more impressive than it actually is. It is not impressive in a real sense, but it was a huge night from my perspective.
At 5pm, Silo’s parking lot was empty, save 6 or 7 cars. I took them time to walk back out Silo’s driveway so I could take a picture of the marquee. The much dilapidated marquee.
Then I walked back to the building. There was one guy standing by the door, and he was holding a clipboard. Naturally I walked up to him so I could ask my usual questions:
1. Where will the line form?
2. What is the camera policy?
3. Are there different areas for over/under 21, and if so, which area is closer to the stage, and how will I know how to do this once inside the door?
Of course, these are questions for a situation where there is a line, and people are streaming into the building.
I approach the guy. “Is this where the line will form?”
“I have no idea,” guy says.
He was a fan. His clipboard was pictures of the band, which he was going to try and have signed. This guy was a bigger fan than I am! I learned his name was Tim, and boy-howdy, if we didn’t strike up a really fast friendship! Aside from my buddy Paul (who was unable to attend due to his wife’s impending due-date–damned priorities!) there is probably no one else in the state of Pennsylvania who I can talk to about 7m3 like this. What 7m3 album would you take to a desert island? (We both agree it’s RockCrown) Are there really only two utternaces of “fuck” in the 7m3 catalogue? (Yes.) I sure do miss Jason Pollock, don’t you miss Jason Pollock? (He misses him more than I do.) Is there a way in which the album day&nightdriving is NOT a breakup album? (No. It is entirely a breakup album) And on and on. I was happy as a squirrel at a squirrel party.
Shortly after I met Tim, he proceeded to tell me that after I parked my car and walked to take a picture of the marquee, Casey Daniel (7m3’s bassist) walked out of the club and into the adjacent Holiday Inn. I was floored! I had yet to comprehend that this band wasn’t still the band that I watched from a balcony at a sold-out 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, ten years ago, and that The Silo in Reading is not The Electric Factory.
Now, I really fucking love Casey Daniel. He is one of the few bassists out there who I am a true fan of what they do. The man is a mad genius. His intricate yet subtle, balls-to-the-wall bass lines truly turn some medicore 7m3 tunes into masterpieces. I listen to some songs, like “First Time Believers”, just to listen to what Casey is doing. I couldn’t believe I had just missed him.
Now, I no longer do the whole “hero worship” thing. Five, ten years ago, I thought my favorite artists were some kind of gods, and if I met them–which I really really wanted to–I’d have peppered them with silly questions relating to the myth surrounding them; some silly hints in liner notes or recurring names in films or irregular iambic structures in poems, and just told them ten different ways that they were “awesome”. Then, a few years ago, something changed, and I came to the realization that even though these people were immensely talented, they were all just people. Hell, I know some immensely talented people who just happen to not be famous, and sometimes I’m just watching them eat a hot dog. So, I decided I did not want to meet my artistic idols. I did not want to bother them, and I now thought it awkward that I would want to meet a regular person; it seemed homo-erotic and obsessive. Listen to the music, watch the movie, read the book–and leave it at that. You’re already having a conversation with them, and that’s where that conversation is meant to end.
Then, about 6 months ago, my sister won meet-and-greet passes to meet the band LIVE (a band I also adore with all my heart), although in the end there was a mix-up and she ended up not getting to meet them. But as the day of the meet-and-greet drew near, we were talking about what she would say to them. She was a bit stumped, as was I. Then I said, “I’d just thank them for everything they’ve done for me.” And I knew right then that I wanted to do that, to say that, to all the artists who had enriched my life, meant so much to me, gotten me through such hard shit, and made the sweet moments of my life so much sweeter. Sure, I can keep throwing money at them, but wouldn’t it be satisfying for everyone involved if I could also tell them that they meant something in my life?
So. I was upset that I’d missed Casey. But no more than 2 minutes after Tim tells me this does Jason-fucking-Ross (vocals, rhythm guitar, lyrics, undenied leader and spirit of the band) walk out the door 5 feet from me, talking on a cell phone! Now I was certain this wasn’t the Electric Factory! I was totally ready to introduce myself right then and there and thank him profusely and even tell him that the album Orange Ave. helped me greatly with my recovery from alcoholism, but he was only out there for a minute, and he was on his cell phone the whole time.
But! Moments later, lead guitarist Thomas Juliano is walking straight toward us! Tim grabs him first. “Tom! Tom! can we just have a moment of your time?”
Let me tell you, Tom had more than a moment for us, he had five minutes for us, and he’s really cool. Not like, cool in the sense of, he’s just a regular Joe; no, Thomas Juliano is they type of guy who is so cool, you wish you could be that cool. And I’m not saying he’s cocky–he was anything but cocky. He was down-to-earth (after all, he’s playing The Silo) and very, very appreciative of our attention. And I got to do something that I’ve wanted to do countless times with countless artists: I got to tell him specific stuff that he had specifically done that had touched me. I told him how much I loved his playing on “Where Are You Calling From?”–how the emotions of his playing perfectly matched the content of the lyrics, how he worked in perfect concert with the rhythm section to literally drive the song like a big rig through Jason Ross’s emotions, etc etc. I was having so much fun! And then, Tom and Tim and I just chatted–about getting gray hair, about how much he missed the old tour bus (Tim had a picture of it; they tour in a van now), and about the hat he was wearing. Then he kindly imformed us he had to go, but told us to stick around after the show!
Then, mere moments later, here comes Casey Daniel! We’re on a roll! We stop Casey and it’s more of the same, and Casey is of course really cool too, but in a different way than Thomas is. I can imagine being roommates with Casey Daniel–and I’d be the responsible one. You immediately feel at ease around him, as though you’ve been friends forever. He drops the F-Bomb within 60 seconds of meeting you. He lets a cigarette hang in his mouth while he talks. He has less of a fashion sense than I do. It was seriously like just meeting a guy on the street; within moments, any apprehension I had was gone; suddenly, I knew Casey Daniel.
My new buddy Tim with Casey
I was even more excited to thank Casey than I was to thank Thomas; I just go apeshit over Casey’s bass playing, and it really does add alot of emotional punch to what is happening in the songs lyric-wise. The first thing I mentioned–and I’m actually saying it as the picture of us together was being taken–was that his playing in the song “Headstrong” makes me poop my pants. And then I did a very smart thing: I got specific. “That change you do, in the middle of the final chorus, where you take it up a notch.” His eyes lit up–someone actually wanted to talk about his bass playing!! And did he ever start throwing me golden nuggets! He told us (for it was not just me, but Tim and I recieving this special moment) the story of “Headstrong” being written–how it was him and Jason Ross living together in a little apartment in Virginia, it was the middle of summer, and on and on. He even showed us some of the song on an “air bass”! Then the conversation steered toward more rare songs, and I mentioned how much I love “Shelf Life” (which was never on a 7m3 album) and his eyes lit up big time; I suppose they don’t have many hard core fans anymore who know the deep tracks. So he told us about “Shelf Life”, and how it materialized, musically, out of jam session in an attic with just himself and Giti Khalsa (the band’s drummer, who unfortunately is not touring with them at the moment, as he has just opened a restaurant in Florida. Some dude is touring in his place but I never did meet him). Then we chatted amiably, Casey talking alot about his bout of Shingles a few years back, which caused him to gain alot of weight and make sit hard for him to play bass sometimes. We must have talked to Casey for ten minutes.
6:30 arrived, and no one else was there to form a “line”, so Tim and I just sorta waltzed into the place by ourselves. Inside there is a huge island bar, tables throughout, a surprisingly large stage, and a railed-in “pit” area, about 20 feet square, in front of the stage. We immediately see Casey at the bar and we stop and talk to him some more. It is unbelievably congenial. Because Paul will want to know: he was drinking a bottle a Budweiser.
After a few minutes of talking to Casey, I edged away and sat at a table. Although Casey showed no signs of being annoyed by us–in fact, seemed to like us quite a bit–I was still wary of overstaying my welcome and bothering him. Eventually Tim joined me, and we settled on staying at this table during the FIVE OPENING BANDS (which I’m not going to bother to talk about there) or until people started actually standing at the stage. We were going to be front row either way, but we weren’t going to stand up there for five openers.
I should take a moment to tell you that Tim was getting stealthily drunk, and this is an awesome fact about Tim. As we were waiting outside, the fact of my recovery had come up in our conversation and he was fully understanding. As we sat at our table throughout the night, Tim would get up “to go to the bathroom” about once every half hour. He would return, every time, with a bottle of water for himself and a Coke for me, despite my protestations. It also became clear that Tim was getting drunk, almost certainly doing a quick shot of something during his stop at the bar. How cool is that? Here I am, a guy he’s only known for two hours, and he’s going out of his way to not bring a drink to our table, even though I had told him outside that I am perfectly fine being around booze now, in bar settings, etc. However, around the fourth opening act, this also got a bit annoying, because he was drunk. He began forgetting what we had already talked about, and we had a couple of conversations for the second time. Nonetheless–a sweet gesture, and I got a lot of free Coke (I did buy him one bottle of water once on a return trip from the bathroom.)
As the second opening act was playing–the only good one, too–I saw Jason-fucking-Ross walking though the bar in a tremendous hurry. He was doing that quick-walking thing, when you’ve really got some place to be. But I couldn’t help myself–I was on a roll. I’d met Thomas and Casey, I simply could not leave without at least saying “Thank you” to Jason. So I, um, kinda, a little bit, stood in his way and stopped him. I stuck out my hand, introduced myself, and said “Thank you for everything.” He was very cool about it, and he thanked me for listening and for showing up, and then he was off. I didn’t get a picture with him, but I told him what I wanted to, and I hope he really heard it.
Nobody came to this concert. Nobody. By the time 7m3 went on (midnight) There were about 30 people in the pit area (most standing near the back, not the stage) and maybe 20 other people at tables and at the bar. It was like watching them play in somebody’s basement. It was neat, but I was sad for the band. They may have headlined only large clubs, but they have played arenas, as recently as 2004, when they opened for Nickleback. So an empty club in podunk Pennsylvania mut not look very awesome from that stage. But Tim and I, from our spots nuzzled up to the stage (no barrier) were determined to rock the fuck out and show these guys some love.
All four guys came onto the stage to ge ttheir equipment ready. They noodled around for awhile, tuning guitars, etc. Then Casey went somewhere. And he didn’t come back. And he didn’t come back. And he didn’t come back. Finally some dude comes onto the stage and whispers something into Jason-fucking-Ross’s ear, and Jason is obviously pissed. I figure, Casey has gotten into some shit. Maybe he has diahrrea, or a phone call from a girlfriend, or something. So Jason confers with Thomas and the drummer guy, and moments later, Jason says into the mic, simply, “Uh, we’re gonna do something until Casey gets back.”
Then Jason and Thomas proceeded to play a guitars-only version of “Times Like These”, a quiet, contemplative song from their masterpiece album RockCrown. Now, I follow 7m3’s setlists online, and, although “Times Like These” may have been played, at the most, 30 times over the last decade, it has certainly never been a show opener, and it hasn’t been played in at least 5 years, not that I’ve seen, anyway. This was one of the last songs I expected to hear. This is just the first of many thrilling moments.
The setlist:
Main set:
Times Like These
RockCrown
Was a Ghost
Last Kiss Headstrong
Shelf Life
Joliet
Settle Up
She Wants Results
Peel
My My
Upside Down
Over Your Shoulder
Dislocated
Southwestern State
Roderigo
Cumbersome
Breakdown
Encore:
Water’s Edge
Strangely at Home
Yeah. Do you see the songs I’ve put in bold there? Yeah. The songs I mentioned to Casey. And these are not songs played by this band frequently. “Headstrong” gets played somewhat–maybe 20% of the setlists I’ve looked at. But “Shelf Life”? That’s as rare as looking in the toilet after you take a crap and finding an Oscar statuette. As both songs started, Casey (who I was directly in front of) pointed at me and smiled. We nodded our heads at each other. During the bass line change at the end of “Headstrong”, I was all about Casey, and he was all about me. We watched each other and smiled, and I jumped around like a lunatic. It was like living in a dream. Literally, it was like living in a dream.
I won’t bother you with why the rest of this setlist is bonkers-crazy unreal. If you are familiar with the band, then you already know. But I just kept crapping my pants over and over again. And Tim and I were rocking out, jumping, throwing our arms in the air, singing at all the right parts, and letting Jason sing when we had no right to be singing (like in “Southwestern State”). I’d turn around occasionally, and see that the room was getting even emptier; people were leaving. Oh well–let them. Seven Mary Three don’t need no room full of people. Seven Mary Three didn’t need nothing but me and Tim.
After the last song (the beautifully exquisite “Strangely at Home”), Jason-fucking-Ross immediately left the stage, and just about everyone in the building except Tim and I left, as well. That left Tim and I (and two other guys who were, thankfully, pretty serious fans of the band, as well) to chat with Thomas and Casey as they packed up their gear. Casey simply said to me, “I hope you liked that”, with a wink, which I took as confirmation those two songs were for me. Then he promptly got on his cell phone.
Thomas, however, was a chatterbox, and I got to, once again, do an unimaginably cool thing: tell one of my favorite musicians, immediately after a show, which parts I thought they did really good in. (I know some of you see alot of local and smaller-venue artists and this probably seems silly to you, but most of the shows I go to are larger-scale clubs and arenas; this kind of interaction is brand new to me). I told Thomas that his solo in “Southwester State” moved me, and that the new take he had brought to “Cumbersome” (and boy, is it new!) made the song fresh for me again. Tim asked Thomas is he could have a guitar pick, and he asked the drummer for a drum stick, which they were happy to give. I didn’t want any thing from them, however. I’ve already gotten so very much.
So, it’s really late at night, and I don’t have time for the kind of entry I want to write here, but I can’t go to bed without putting something here, so I’ll give a quick rundown, mainly for Paul’s benefit, since I won’t be able to tell him about this until tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have a more detailed blog about this tomorrow night.
1. Met the entire band except for drummer Giti Khalsa, who isn’t touring with the band this tour–though I didn’t meet his fill-in, either. Talked to bassist Casey Daniels and guitarist Thomas Juliano at length, mainly about a few of my favorite songs of the moment, but also about Casey’s shingles (the illness, not the roofing), the upcoming 7m3 live album (which I did not know about!), Thomas’ salt and pepper hair, etc etc. I’ll have more on that tomorrow. Met lead singer Jason Ross inside the venue. He was in quite a hurry so I didn’t bother him for a pic, but I shook his hand and thanked him for everything and he was quite gracious, despite being in a quite obvious hurry.
2. The band played the two songs I had talked to Casey about, and they were definitely put in the setlist for me!!! (“Headstrong” and “Shelf Life” back to back); Casey pointed at me and grinned during both songs (I was right in front of him) and after the show he walked over to me and simply said “I hope you liked that.”
3. I know I always say something like “The setlist was amazing!” in my post-show blogs, but really…I honestly can’t believe that set just happened and it wasn’t a dream. I follow their setlists online and nothing like this has ever happened. The setlist isn’t online yet, and I’m not sure I can re-create it from memory, but (this next bit will probably only interest Paul)…they opened with “Times Like These”! They weren’t going to but they had to improvise..full story tomorrow. The show ended with “Strangely at Home Here”!!! Can you say HolyShit!!! Other songs in the set:
–Southwestern State
–Roderigo
–Was a Ghost
–Joliet
…and alot more!!! But I’m having trouble thinking right now!!! Full blog tomorrow. More pics are already up on my Facebook!
My good buddy Paul used to–and still does–intentionally do a thing which he knows messes with my mind quite a bit. He will sing very wrong lyrics to songs while in my presence, over and over again, until he cements the wrong version in my mind, to the point that I thereafter have tremendous difficulty singing the correct lyrics. This is on my mind at the moment because on the way home from work tonight, on three different radio stations, three of the “big four” of these songs got played on the radio and I am fuming all over again at Paul’s insistence to mess with my mind like this. I figured I should complain about this in a public forum so that Paul can be bludgeoned and cuckolded whenever anyone encounters him. Here, for a glimpse into Paul’s mind, are the Big Four songs that he has all but ruined for me for the rest of my life:
Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”:
Real lyric:
“Keep on rockin’ in the free world!”
Paul lyric:
“Keep on rockin’ singin’ Free Bird!”
A simple enough change, I know, but I can’t shake it.
Everlast’s “What It’s Like”:
Real lyric: “God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes.”
Paul lyric: “God forbid you ever had to walk in my linen shoes.”
This one has probably given me the most trouble over the years.
Seven Mary Three’s “Favorite Dog”:
Real lyric: “I love that rusty water like it was my favorite dog.”
Paul lyric: “I love that Rusty Wallace like he was my favorite dog.”
Once again, a very simple change, but I am now completely unable to sing the song correctly.
And, his masterpiece, his strangest mindfuck ever:
Stone Temple Pilots’ “Dead and Bloated”:
Real lyric: “I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed.”
Paul lyric: “I am looking like a dog that somebody fucked up in the nose with a toothbrush.”
1. Before an awesome lunch with Joni, we saw a squirrel trying to get into a drainpipe, and it was hilarious.
2. Joni also wore what I would consider to be the shirt best matched to the person wearing it, ever. It’s like someone made that shirt for her.
3. Started off my day by watching 2005’s ‘Rumor Has It’. I loved it. What’s going on with me and romantic comedies? I used to think they were the devil.
4. Saw the very first guy who was my roommate my first time through rehab walking down the street with a case of beer.
5. I’m going to mention my sister now so I can create a sister tag for my blog, which I don’t understand how one doesn’t already exist. PS my sister rules.
6. Walked from my apartment to Thornwald Park, did some reading, met Michael there, and we watched a nice free bluegrass show in the park. Talked through most of it. Beautiful evening for sitting in a park for live music. Instead of walking right home, I stopped at the theater and saw ‘Bruno’. It was OK. It’s no ‘Borat’. Then stopped at the chinese buffet. Then went to wal-mart and bought more stuff than I should have, since the walk back was rather long. My shoulder hurts.
7. Quote from Michael today: “You want to eat my arm, don’t you?”
8. Mary is a freelance writer. She got a job today to write a screenplay that apparently involves a road trip and medicinal marijuana. I’m excited for her!
9. Took some dumpster pictures on my walk today. I continue to be amazed by how many great dumpster pics I can get in this one podunk town of Carlisle.
10. Going to bed now, going to try to catch up on the 8 unread magazines on my bedside table.
11. Oh, PS, another quote from Michael today: “What’s a romantic attachment? Is that like a dildo or something?”
12. Things I need to add to this entry to create tags for my blog without having to actually write an entry about them:
Paul, Modest Mouse, NPR, P.T. Anderson, Philip Larkin, High School, Childhood, spirituality, woods
Notes From the Fire 
